


Tear Tracks from the North

by geekprincess26



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Headcanon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:39:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: Jon Snow could never again be content with life beyond the Wall.  Sansa Stark could never again be content trying to survive and rule as the last of the Starks.A drabbly headcanon turned one-shot post-finale fic about what could have happened after the cameras stopped rolling.  Canon compliant, but refuses to leave Jon and Sansa in the lives the finale implied they had.





	Tear Tracks from the North

Jon Snow did not stay at the Wall for long.

 

After many months, he tired of his labors and fell back into a deep depression.  Seeing his distress, Tormund Giantsbane, leader of the Free Folk, sent a raven to Queen Sansa, his closest surviving relative.  After consulting her maester, she sent a secret missive back, along with a small vial of clear liquid.  Tormund duly fed it to Jon, whose heart slowly stopped beating.  The maester of the Night’s Watch declared him dead and asked Tormund and a few of the other Free Folk to handle his burial.  They promptly loaded him onto a wagon and escorted him back to Winterfell with Ghost.  Along the way, his body slipped out of the stupor into which the medicine had cast him, but he still spoke no words and would barely eat.

 

They arrived at Winterfell late one night and at once brought Jon to the maester’s quarters.  He opened his eyes just in time to see a flash of tears and red hair and feel the impact of Sansa’s overjoyed embrace.

 

“Your death has been marked in the annals of the Night’s Watch,” she told him.  “You are free to come and go as you please.”

 

The first words Jon spoke in nigh a month took the form of a croaked protest about Bran’s bargain with Grey Worm, but Sansa shook her head firmly.

 

“Grey Worm sailed to Naath long ago,” she informed him, “and those Unsullied who remain in Westeros have begun warming to their new home and king.  Some have even married and begun families.  A few have remarked on the harshness of your sentence, now that they have had time to reflect on it.   If you do not do aught to garner much attention to yourself, they will pay you none.”

 

Jon only shook his head, but he did eat the stew Sansa offered him.  Over the following weeks, his gaunt face and near-skeletal body filled out nicely, and his sallow cheeks turned pink with life.  He insisted on helping the people of Winterfell repair their home; it was his duty, after all, and he must earn his keep.  Sansa shook her head at that, but did not protest aloud.  Instead, she poured her energies into ensuring that he, like her other people, was well-fed.  She personally delivered stew and bread to him every noon as he labored under the spring sunlight.  She sewed him new garments and kept a seat open at Winterfell’s high table for him every night.  And every so often, she would ask for his counsel about refreshing the castle’s weapons stores, or handling a quarrel between two hot-headed young lords, or where he thought the new granaries ought to go.  Every so often turned into every day, and often into every night by the fireplace in her solar, where Jon would review her letters and charters and deeds over a cup of wine or ale.  Sometimes they said little.  Other times they laughed over their childhood memories.  Eventually, more recent events crept into their conversation.  One night, after a day of settling particularly fractious quarrels among her lords and ladies, Sansa’s wine cup shook in her hand as she admitted that she had never been more terrified than the day she’d gotten the raven carrying the news of the sack of King’s Landing, not even when she’d had to live with Ramsay.

 

“I couldn’t - I couldn’t lose you - or Arya,” she said, trembling.  The first tears she’d cried in months left her eyes then, and Jon gently took her by the shoulders.  She stared up at him, and he hesitated until she huddled against him and wept.

 

Not long after that, as they were walking through the glass gardens, Sansa showed Jon the budding fireflowers, and he turned white as a ghost and sat in the dirt with his arms wrapped over his head.  Sansa said nothing, but she sank down beside him at once, heedless of her fine dress, and wrapped her arms around him, stroking his curls gently with one hand.  It took him over an hour to rise and suffer her to lead him back into his chambers, and no sooner had he reached them than he collapsed on the bed, sobbing.

Sansa said nothing the following day, but every so often, Jon began alluding to the birds he’d seen flying past his prison cell window, to the shapes the sunlight would make on the floors, to any number of other fragmented recollections to which Sansa would listen with rapt attention.  Sometimes he would stop in the middle of a sentence and go silent, or even begin weeping, but slowly, as the last snow heaps melted and the violets covered the fields, he began finishing each story, even the worst stories - the ones about his imprisonment on Dragonstone and hatching his desperate plan to persuade her to come North, even at the cost of his honor, and then of his imprisonment in Winterfell, when he had briefly thought himself free of Daenerys before she threatened Sansa, then refused to let him speak of his heritage or to listen to his family, since they must all be plotting against her.  It took months more for him to speak aught of the day she burned King’s Landing and of the day his desperation and his conscience plunged his knife into Daenerys’s heart.  But Sansa always listened to him patiently and never shamed him for his reluctance or for the tears that occasionally escaped him, and eventually Jon took his own turn listening as Sansa recalled the month her heart beat like a bird’s so constantly she thought it would explode, starting with the day Varys’s raven had reached her, continuing through long nights of her writing missives and sending messengers and hastening with Bran to King’s Landing at such speed that they traveled overnight almost every night, only stopping for two nights on the entire journey.  Their nights in front of the fire got longer, and sometimes they fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.  More often than not, Jon would wake first and gently lift Sansa in his arms.  Sometimes she would start and gasp, but the sound of Jon’s voice rumbling against her ear would calm her at once.

 

When he had first returned to Winterfell, Jon had never even approached the seat Sansa always set aside for him at her table; but soon enough he forgot when he had last taken dinner in his quarters, as had been his wont. He never said much, but he often grinned into his stew as he watched Sansa charm surly lords or hand out lemon cakes to their children.  Once or twice, he cleared his throat and interrupted a conversation Sansa clearly did not want to have with a flirtatious lad too far into his cups.  Sansa always thanked him afterwards.  She teased him that his glare alone could stop men in their tracks, and he offered to do more than glare if any lord should need a sterner reminder about how to treat his Queen.

 

Once, on Sansa’s name day, he did do more than glare.  One of the visiting Riverlands lords leered at Sansa over dinner, then let his hand wander while they were dancing.  Jon cut in at once and shoved the man away from a wide-eyed Sansa.

 

“I’ll put you in the dungeons myself,” he growled.  The dancing had stopped, and several of the other lords, both Riverlander and Northern, had stepped forward.

“That is not necessary, Jon.”  Sansa’s voice was as firm as her face was ashen.  “Lord Dorrel is in his cups and shall leave the feast.”

 

Lord Dorrel’s men dragged him away amid many apologies.  Soon after that, Sansa left the hall.  She did not get far before Jon caught up with her.  She whirled and squealed with fright when she felt his hand on her shoulder; he supposed she must not have heard him call her name.  Wordlessly, he took her into his arms, and for a long time they stood there, Sansa trembling in Jon’s embrace as he stroked her hair and pressed his lips to her head.  At last, when her shaking had subsided, he guided her to her chambers, but no sooner had they reached the solar than she clung to him like a woman drowning and begged him to stay there with her, just for a few more minutes.

 

They woke as the first light of dawn crept through the windows.  Jon carefully lifted Sansa and carried her to her bed, but she woke as he set her down and whispered a sleepy “I’m sorry.”  

 

Jon tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes.  “There’s nothing to forgive, sweet girl,” he whispered, and Sansa’s eyes shone.

 

“The last time you told me that,” she whispered, “you said, ‘Where will  _we_ go?’”

 

Jon smiled at the memory.  “I thought you meant to go off without me,” he replied.  Sansa shook her head.

 

“I thought the same thing myself,” she said, and sat up to face him.  “I - I was so afraid you’d leave me.”

 

Her voice stumbled over the last few words, and Jon sank to his knees beside her.

“No,” he whispered.  “I’d never have left you then, and I’ll never leave you now.  Not unless you want me to.”

 

His heart sank to his stomach and lower as he said it, but Sansa shook her head and clung to him once more. 

 

“Never,” she assured him, and raised her eyes, ice blue in the pale light of dawn, to plead with his.  “I never - please - no, never leave me, Jon; I lo - I don’t want you to go, not ever.”

 

Jon smiled and touched his forehead to hers.

 

“I’ll always be here for you, sweet girl,” he murmured, and lowered his lips to touch her forehead just as Sansa sat up straighter, causing his lips to alight on hers instead.  For a brief moment, Jon sighed against their softness, and for an even briefer one he almost tried to deepen the kiss, before he startled and moved back.  He thought Sansa would be angry, or at least as startled as he; but she was flushed and smiling, and she reached for him and took his lips again, and he cradled her head and kissed her and whispered again and again how much he loved her, how much he needed her, how she need never fear that he would depart from her again, Grey Worm or no Grey Worm, bargain or no bargain.

 

He repeated his vow to her the next month in the godswood, with the entire household of Winterfell as their witnesses.  Bran, of course, could not attend, nor could he acknowledge Jon as King; but Jon did not wish to be King any more than he wished to travel to King’s Landing himself, and Sansa smiled when he said it.

 

“You shall always be my King,” she told him, “and you are my home.  I promised I should never leave my home, you remember, and that is a vow I mean to keep.”

And she did.

 

 


End file.
